Open Letter to Ghanaian Artistes: The anger of Ghanaian Publicists/Promoters

You can be the best talent in the world but without publicity, it is useless. There are enormous great talents stuck at home due to inadequate funds to help publicize them. I can mention more than 20 Up and Coming talents that are 4 times better than the big names in the country now but let’s save that for another time.

When a Ghanaian Artiste is coming to a Publicist/Promoter for the first time with a new song, they behave like a 13 year old JHS student who is meeting her boyfriend outside campus for the first time. The titles they call the Publicist/Promoter with can make him/her salivate throughout the chat. Oh Chief Justice, CEO, Senior, My Lord, Ghanaian’s only etc are some of the titles they use to lure the Publicist/Promoter to put their songs on the various media.

I remember vividly when Fiifi Adinkrah told me he won’t do free things again. Fiifi is the CEO of www.ghanandwom.com . He was saying this due to numerous ingratitude of Artistes when they cleverly use their minds to get their songs on his medium and later turn their backs on him. He wasn’t the only one, Derby Ghanaian Promoter, a blogger with www.ghanafilla.net is no longer in the Showbiz because to him “when you follow these people (Artistes), you won’t have anything in life. They are full of ungrateful people”. Papa Kwesi Abakah of spy360gh has already written his into an open letter earlier this year. Zionfelix of www.zionfelix.com last week told me “I’m buying a new theme for my website and so no more free things”. Armani of www.ghxclusives.com always nags about how unbearable things are sometimes due to the barrage free things he does. Abeiku Quansah of www.ghcampuz.com ‘s acrimony can be the whole of this story. Attractive of www.ghanasuperstar.com always advises me, “Chale these people if you don’t use your mind..yooo!. I call them work for Jah and Allah will bless you”

Confidently saying, none of these hardworking Publicists/Promoters in Ghana is more than 26years. The fact that these wordsmiths are using their skill and talents to help Ghana ‘Showbizly’ is incredible. The fact that they strategically manage their limited time to help Ghanaian Artistes to gain strong online presence is amazing. Most Event Promoters outside Ghana all the time tell us where they heard about these Artistes and added them to shows in Europe and in all of their sources, online dominate.

Tigo has the most affordable internet charges in Ghana and almost all my colleague Bloggers ride on that. They (Tigo) charge GHC2 a day for unlimited internet package. 2 X 7 = 14; 14 X 4 = 56. This is how much a blogger who relies on the philanthropy of tigo spends in a month; GHC 56. Domain names for the various websites and hosting are renewed yearly as well. And most bloggers are students too, sorry for not alerting you on it.

An Artiste who is popular does not charge less than GH 2,000 per show. And if it is outside Accra (where most of them reside), they double this amount or triple it. Ghanaian Bloggers are not expecting even quarter of the show money but at least aaaba!

This is a wakeup call to Artistes in Ghana; the bloggers are ‘getting wiser’ and are turning to report more of foreign news which even fetch more traffic than local contents. I am one of them and since we all have dreams and ambitions to accomplish, we also need to make something out of our skills and talents.

If you will play free shows, I will publicize for free; if the Producer will record for free, I’m more than ready to put it online for free as well. We understand we are to help grow the nation through whichever means we could but some conscience should as well soliloquy to you how these youngsters survive as well.

ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

An Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. He holds first degree in Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ghana; Political Science (major) and History (minor). He has also pursued MSc Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) at the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow (YALI) who studied at Clark Atlanta University on the Business and Entrepreneurship track. His mentors are Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Sam Jonah, Kwaku Sakyi Addo and Piers Morgan